This battle will end in 25 days. Best of luck to both competitors.
Printable View
This battle will end in 25 days. Best of luck to both competitors.
Out of Character:
Looking up from his journal, Caduceus glanced around in the dim light created by his coldflame. He tucked the book away in his bedroll and restrapped the pack to his back.Quote:
Originally Posted by Caduceus' Journal
"Ladies and gentlemen, time to move!" he called, against his legs' better judgment.
There is nothing more telltale than the voice of an avalanche. At first it was faint, as one with the distant growl of wolves, the haunting howls of wind. Yet even as they poured down dunes of windswept white, the whispers fell to deadened ears – whispers unnoticed, until whispers no more. The legion turned at the rumbling beckon, a stentorian call to attention from the lungs of the mountain, from the lungs of this titan sheathed in everlasting ice. The legion turned in time to see the great white flood as it broke against outcropping stones, as it crashed against a fence of pines that quickly bent and snapped – the only things between the score of soldiers and the finality of snow’s embrace.
There had never been much sunlight in the deep reaches of the North, in the barren wastes of Berevar.
And now, there was none at all.
:::::
She could feel herself blink. A sudden rush of cold assail her eyes. Still, she saw nothing but an unnerving gloom that sometimes flickered the faintest blue. “Where…” she rasped, the sensation of frozen grit in her throat. Pain was a cold flame as she coughed, her voice a hoary murmur when she spoke again. “Where am I?”
“You are now in safety’s nest, Cassock is glad to see.” In this void of black and blue, the familiar voice, sedate and cryptic as it was, had been a relief. A small and gangly hand brushed the back her head, the four of its fingers prodding it lightly. Fires flared behind her eyes, and though they shed no light on the world surrounding her, she was no longer in the dark concerning her particular predicament. “We have fallen, Sati.”
Picks sounded not far away in splintering echoes. “Fallen? In what sense?” Little by little she could feel eddies of cold lap at her flesh, but oddly she did not recoil. Slowly, she wassuccumbing to the cold within rather than the cold without. She was remembering.
“In all senses. Fallen down this cavern. Fallen as an army. Fallen to the abyss.” Again, he spoke without inflection. The Patriarch, as warming as his presence had been, was a cold being.
“A cave… a cave!” Sati cried out suddenly, jerking halfway up before collapsing in a heap. There, she convulsed as pain tore into her neck. “A cave!” she continued shouting hysterically, the numbness in her heart thawing like ice at the break of spring. “This could be it! His lair! Have you searched? Have you found him? Have you found the Sixth?”
In the murk, she saw Cassock shake his head, and the numbness settled once more. Then, she realized that she could see. Careful not to jerk her wounded neck, she scanned the environs, noticing winding corridors of varying shapes, their walls of ice glistening a deep shade of still water. Somehow, its ripples reminded her of a womb; the thought comforted her. “Then we search on, Cassock. You said we had fallen? Then we rise again, and we search on.”
Sati ground her teeth, unmindful of the ache that overtook her frail body. She struggled to restrain her words, to keep herself silent. She was afraid of the weakness that railed in her desperation, afraid of showing it to all those who had followed her here, into the frozen and unforgiving chasms of the world. ‘I need him. My sister needs him.’
“Maiden! Patriarch!” a sandy voice roared from a few paces ahead, followed by the awkward shift of scales and claws against slippery ice. Rounding one of the many tunnels was a Onarom Tusk, captain of the Basilisk Dragoons. He was a tall man bearing a winged helmet of silver steel, the slits of his eyes burning a sickly green through the slats of the visor. He looked imposing with his ornate half-plate and the immense battalion lance that was slung across his back, but the fact that his lower body was that of a four-legged, draconic giant might have been the most determining factor. Mounted on his reptilian back was a shorter being, draped in white rags that seemed to drift as though underwater. Its face was concealed under an immaculate hood, but the withered look of its grey and dead hands disproved all possibility of a hidden holiness. “We have found all survivors of the avalanche, all those who were able to find refuge in these underground tunnels. Maiden… we number but six in all.”
From a hundred… to six. Sati sighed, but at least she knew they hadn’t lost all to the avalanche: The land of Berevar itself had claimed over half. For days, they had wandered the dunes, losing the scouts to the white horizons, one by one. Here, compasses had spun as if drunken and disoriented. The stars were no longer the faithful guides of old, but devious traitors that snickered from their sidereal perches. Everything in these wastelands was mocking them, had been leading them round and round – death seemed the only way this circle would ever close. “Some may have made it… outside.” She angled her gaze to the decrepit thing on Onarom’s back. “You… Warden, I require your assistance.”
“My name is Wilt,” it rasped in a voice both hollow and gritty, brimming with disdain for everything that is. “And you will one day come to regret your request.”
“Is that a threat, Wilt?”
“Only if you feel menaced by the inevitable, Maiden.” With this, the creature cackled, outstretching its arm. There was barely any flesh to it, the skin pulled taut about scarce strips of muscle and tendon. At once, dark streams linked Sati’s injured neck to his dark and broken fingernails, the sorcerous flow slowly ebbing into the Warden’s body. He broke the link with a flick, his coarse cackle sounding louder now. Moments later, there was a splintering ruckus, like shattered boulders rolling down a hillside to form a scree. “Those were the last two of the six… the zealots have found an exit. Oh, joy.”
The flaring ache in her neck had faded, but she felt a surge of unease, as though in fear that the mending had come with a price she had not agreed to pay. She then shook her head, realizing that there was no such thing. She would pay any price if it meant this search would come to fruition, if it meant finding this elusive man. A hero of old, sung in the tales from the War of the Tap. A hero, whose power was said to rival that of the Forgotten Ones. ‘My enemies.’
She swore she would pay any price to slake her thirst for vengeance. And they, in turn, would pay… especially Xem’Zûnd, for what he had done to her beloved sister. And for that, she needed Galam Emrys, the man once meant to become the Forgotten Sixth.
Sati grinned as she rocked to her feet. “We rise again,” she said to all those present, and started for the exit. Cold blusters could now reach her from the breach in the cavern, and had she shed the tears she held back, they would have frozen stiff like icicles. ‘And as we do, so will old wars rise in our wake.’
I've been asked to step in and judge this round.
Magdalena wins. Morituri te Salutant advances.